The Hidden Costs of Organized Labor Victories: Consumers Suffer the Most

The Hidden Costs of Organized Labor Victories: Consumers Suffer the Most

No matter what happens in the economy or politics – CONSUMER always gets screwed at the end.

Large corporations find a way to profit or cut their losses; the government always finds a way to use its control over us to take good care of itself and its bureaucracy – but we, the consumers, and taxpayers are always the big losers. Whenever a union strike happens, mainstream media never support the employers that the strike is directed against – mainstream media are always on the labor side. When a strike ends with a deal between a large company and its employees, the mainstream media always celebrates organized labor “victories” but never tells the truth about how these “victories” will affect us, the consumers. For many months now we watched actors and writers picketing outside of studios demanding more money and more rights from Hollywood studios. Of course everyone sympathized with the actors – well, first of all we love to watch them on TV, they are cool people and secondly they are employees fighting against big bad FACELESS Netflix studios so for us, consumers it was a no brainer – we supported the actors. Now that they “won” it’s not the studios who will suffer one way or another, it will be us, the consumers – we are the ones who will have to pay more for the content produced by the motion picture industry!  Naturally, the big bad faceless industry shifted the increase in costs of making those NETFLIX shows and movies to us, the consumers! 

Some of us will say: “So what? Actors deserve better! We are willing to pay more to deliver economic justice to them! “Ok, great! Now, what about the automotive industry strike? Ford, Chevy, Cadillac and other car companies will also shift higher costs of producing cars to us, the consumers – we will pay more for domestic cars. Certainly, auto workers deserve better, right? SOCIAL EQUITY requires that they get more money – we’ll pay for it if necessary, right? 

OK, fine. How about Kaiser employees striking for higher wages? Hospitality workers? Grocery industry workers? They all deserve higher wages and naturally their employers will shift the high labor costs to us! We are and will be paying more and more for our health coverage, for medical services, for groceries, for hotel stays, for cars, for movies etc etc.

Don’t be fooled – those billionaires are not getting poorer, stockholders not sharing their money (they ll simply invest money elsewhere in a more profitable company), investors will move their money to more capitalist and therefore profitable places;  – but we, the consumers, can’t go anywhere, we will stay and “consume” everything at higher prices. We are the compassionate suckers who always get screwed unless….Unless we WAKE UP. If you are that happy actor who just “won”, eager to go back to NETFLIX to make another woke NETFLIX “masterpiece” about the urban suffering of a sympathetic  unhoused black transsexual at the hands of “evil” white cops, don’t celebrate too much!   You are also a consumer who will get screwed by your fellow labor union workers – yes, you get higher compensation now (YAY!), BUT you will pay more for FOOD, for your car, for your rent (because of tenant rights eliminating housing opportunities), for your healthcare and everything else! All your hard won compensation increases will amount to nothing at the end because of higher prices driven by labor union “victories” !  

Those employees who are not even part of the corrupt organized labor system will suffer even more – not only are they getting market based salaries without extorting the employer benefits and rights, but they are also paying a lot more for everything.  

Economic Damage from organized labor strikes and economic extortion is not the only type of damage that is being caused by pro labor wealth and power redistribution. 

In the past, we were not only paying lower prices for products and services, but also getting much better customer service anywhere we went because employees lived in fear of being fired and demoted for poor customer service. Now, in the age of unprecedented expansion of labor rights and social safety net , workers lost that fear and became lazy, greedy, negligent and mean. This is what they say to their boss:

You want to fire me because I mistreated a customer? 

First of all, I will go to employment lawyer and find a way to sue you for some kind of a violation of labor code , I will fabricate timesheets and pretend like you exploited me and didn’t let me go to lunch; or pretend like you sexually harassed me or abused me in some other way and you, the employer, will settle for big money with me and my lawyer because you won’t have the guts to go to trial and face a hostile jury that consists of employees naturally siding with me,  their fellow employee against big bad business! 

Secondly, if you, the employer, are lucky to not get sued, and I leave in peace – I can just sit home and collect unemployment checks indefinitely ! Plus my landlord can’t evict me because as a tenant I have rights and landlord doesn’t – if they try to evict me , I will go to some shady non profit tenant rights advocates organization and they will make landlord’s life so miserable he’ll pay me thousands of dollars if I decide to move or will just have to put up with me living for free ! 

For employers there is no meaningful leverage to make employees provide quality service anymore – so as consumers, we also have to put up with terrible rude attitudes, slow poor quality service, negligence and more…We are reduced to leaving nasty comments on yelp that are mostly misguided and only hurt and destroy small businesses when the true cause for our anger were bad employees who those businesses just could not control due to employee rights and social safety net!

Pro labor policies of the California socialist regime had caused thousands of businesses to close, or move to capitalist states like Florida or Texas which also caused loss of jobs for those very employees who are supposed to enjoy more rights and privileges.

On a bigger scale, the Biden socialist regime, when it came to power, printed over a trillion dollars in Rescue package money presumably to help the employees who lost jobs due to the pandemic survive. As a result, those so called “victims of Pandemic” stayed home when businesses reopened collecting government handouts and living for free at the expense of the landlords and taxpayers due to eviction moratoriums.

This causes tremendous labor shortages, major inflation and price hikes. All in the name of helping the workers.

What am I really driving here? My point is that CONSUMERS must realize that their biggest enemy is not big bad business, private companies or small mom and pop local stores – the number one enemy of the consumer is the GOVERNMENT that in the name of helping employees hurts consumers. It is the government that supports greedy and corrupt labor unions instead of cracking down on them, it is the government that robs taxpayers of their money, it is the government that deprives property owners of their property with pro employee and pro tenant draconian regulations. 

Government whether it be through the judicial system, or through the legislative process, had the power to ban unions, to limit the employee rights to common sense safeguards against excessive exploitation and  protect them from abuse such as non-payment of salary that had been earned. Yet, due to demagoguery of pro labor politicians, socialist minded judges and unscrupulous lawyers and juries we’ve built the unsustainable system of creating a privileged worker class at the expense of consumers, taxpayers, business owners. We built a corrupt socialist system where a few have the incentive to work hard, be loyal to their employer and grateful to consumers for supporting the business where employees work. If you see a good attitude, a friendly smile, and quality service it’s because there are some conscientious workers that have good work ethic and work hard despite every incentive not to! But a normal capitalist market system can not be built on favors by some nice people!  Market must regulate labor-employer-consumer relations, not the government!

If consumers do not realize that bad government that corrupts employees and supports corrupt organized labor is the root of all consumer suffering, consumers are doomed and will continue to get screwed over and over again. Why is the government so bad again? – you might ask. The answer is because it’s populist! Politicians find it much easier to get votes from the population that consists mostly of employees by “selling“ them more benefits and higher salaries without explaining the CONSEQUENCES of it for society as a whole! You have to do a lot of work trying to enlighten the population why unions are bad, why rescue packages are bad, why higher salaries that are not market based are bad, why government control that gives more handouts is bad. You need someone with an art of persuasion – and politicians, even the smart ones, don’t feel that it’s worth it to do this hard work of convincing the population to THINK a few steps ahead! For the population it’s much easier just to vote for whoever promises more handouts without thinking about the consequences. For the politicians it’s much easier to win powerful political positions with such populism rather than sincerely act to benefit the people who want to be self-sufficient and work hard !

At the end of the day, consumers must take responsibility for voting for bad politicians too; employees are also consumers and must take off their employee hat when they vote and think about themselves as consumers too. Maybe when it happens, things will start to improve. Until then all we should expect is more strikes, higher prices, bad customer service, loss of jobs, more government control and more unsustainable decay of all social institutions where no one wants to work hard and everyone feels entitled.